


Nocturne of an Empty Mirror

by RoseFrederick



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Hearing Voices, Insomnia, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 19:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12217269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseFrederick/pseuds/RoseFrederick
Summary: You cannot stay awake forever to protect yourself from the night.  Not unless you're willing to go a step further and become part of the darkness.





	Nocturne of an Empty Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anysin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anysin/gifts).



The girl waits as moonlight pouring in the window slowly slides across the floor of the room, ears desperately tuned for the tiniest hint of noise. The room, the house, the night itself is quiet and has been for long hours. Eventually she will lose the ability to keep her eyes open. Sleep will take her. No amount of dread will keep it at bay forever. Yet she can't give in without a fight, not when she doesn't know, not when she can't trust that blood won't run true. When she can't be sure her blood won't run at someone else's whims again. She has never liked the color red on herself.

In the daylight, they call her Anna, but that isn't her. A true name is given in celebration and acknowledgment; there had been only obligation and pieces of paper filed away in a courthouse somewhere for her. It doesn't matter what they call her, it isn't her **name**. Especially when in the night, when the doors are closed and the blinds are drawn down, the people who call themselves her family name her Burden and Trash and Freak. 

They say she looks like her mother, but in the mirror she sees nothing of the broken jagged pieces of a woman she will be glad to never see again. Her outer shell has brown hair and dark eyes, but what does that say of what she is? 

It's been three weeks since the woman in blue with the fake smile sent her to live with the family who is kin to the one who birthed her. It is three weeks and two days exactly when the silence of the night is broken by the creak of a door, but it is not the door the girl expects to hear. Her heart jumps anyway, fear flashing through her like a surge of electricity.

She peeks subtly through her eyelashes with the shield of the blankets adding further cover, sure her ears have betrayed her. The pretense is fast abandoned when she sees her closet door is now ajar. The closet is small and shallow. Yet despite the bright glare of moonlight illuminating the room, the space behind the door is a black abyss of nothingness. Except for the gleaming white eyes staring out at her. She sits up fully in the bed, letting the blankets fall. It's only a monster, not family, after all. 

_Little child-creature, are you afraid of death?_ She hears the words in a sibilant whisper in her head, the silence of the night unbroken. 

“Whose death?” she asks, mostly unafraid. Not so unafraid she isn't careful to keep her voice low enough to avoid waking **them**.

She waits, but there is no answer. With deliberation, she pushes the blankets aside and swings her bare feet onto the carpeted floor. She knows all the creaky spots of this old house now, and her steps are sure as she moves to the closet. When she carefully reaches up to the knob and pulls the door wide, the space is empty but for her meager belongings. She knows she should be relieved, but something deep within her cries in disappointment.

The day that follows is long. The boy adds to her bruises. The woman and the man make her apologize and intend to punish her by sending her to her room, but the escape from their presence is always a relief. She leaves her closet door open just a crack, and when night comes, she waits. The girl is not disappointed.

_Do you not fear?_

“I don't want to die,” she replies. “But I do not fear a quick end.”

_And if I were to snatch you up and take you away into the darkness? Would you fear then?_

“It would be away from here. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.” She's not so naïve as to believe things could be no worse, but bravado has worked for her so far. The monster cannot betray a trust it doesn't have and all the stories say that the dark relies on the power you give it. 

_What could be so bad in this place that you have no fear of my darkness, child-creature?_

Telling the woman in blue had gotten her here. Maybe telling the monster will only lead her someplace just as bad. But the monster doesn't hide in the sunlight with fake smiles and empty promises. Trusting people is a game she always loses. Why not try trusting monsters instead? Safety isn't something she's ever had to lose. The ugly words spill out.

She ends with the most important declaration of all. “I'm not one of them.”

_Would you rather be one like me, child-creature?_

Its not-voice is tinged with amusement, but her own reply is sure and serious. “Yes.”

 _We'll see,_ it replies.

She does not know what that means, but for the first time in far too long, she looks forward with anticipation, not dread. She does not even mind their scoldings for her inattention. The throbbing of her ankle matters not at all compared to the impatience she feels for night to finally come.

When it does, the monster tells her of screams and fear and death. It tells her of shadows and dark spaces and nights never-ending, watching her reaction all the while with those burning bright eyes. Finally, it asks a second time, _Do you still want to be like me, child-creature?_

“Yes,” she says just as sure, maybe more. “Please.”

 _You would have to give up your **name**_ , it warns.

"I have no name that matters."

She tries to reach into the blackness when it fades as the room begins to brighten with the light of false dawn. She doesn't cry when she fails, but oh, it hurts.

 _Soon_ , it reassures her, what remains of its not-voice barely there at all.

When it returns, it does not try to scare or entice her with stories. _This is the time that counts_ , it tells her. She knows. Of course the third of three will make a bargain real. _For the last time I ask, do you want to be like me, child-creature? Be sure._

“Yes,” she replies immediately, without reservation. If it is a mistake, she'll happily make it anyway. 

Time passes, night comes and goes. She learns and changes. She no longer fears the blanketing darkness. It will shield her now as one of its own, if **they** dare attempt to broach it. The quiet, the opportunity to sleep if she still had any need of such things – it isn't enough, though. Another night comes. 

_Death_ , it whispers, in its voice that makes no sound.

 _Death_ , she agrees, her mouth never moving, _for them. The boy first._

 _My child_ , it says, proudly.

The stairs are steep and the polished wood floor at the bottom completely unforgiving. The shadows hide her from discovery, she was there but never there. She loves the way the black dress for the funeral twirls around her legs. 

She'll wear it again soon.


End file.
